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On the 1st of January 1818, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was published. Just ten days later, Ozymandias, her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley's most famous poem, appeared in print in The Examiner. It was a striking overlap for the young couple to have their two greatest works appear in print so close together. But then theirs was a difficult and unusual relationship that was all too fleeting. How had Mary and Percy come together and what inspired her to start writing Frankenstein when she was only 18 years old? This is the story of Mary Shelley, the inventor of Gothic science fiction.
The woman known to history as Mary Shelley was born on the 30th of August 1797 in the Somers Town neighbourhood of London, England. Her baptismal name was Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. Shelley was her married name later in life. Mary's father was William Godwin, a radical political philosopher and writer. Her mother was the noted feminist writer and social reformer, Mary Wollstonecraft, author of the 1792 book A Vindication of the Rights of Woman which argued that men and women were equal in all ways. Mary's parents were highly controversial
personalities in the late eighteenth century. They had married on the 29th of March 1797, by which time Mary was already pregnant. Mother and daughter would never know each other. Mary Wollstonecraft died from post-partum infection eleven days after giving birth to Mary. Mary grew up feeling a great deal of guilt for being the unwitting cause of her mother's death. As small children, both she and her half-sister, Fanny, looked to William for the love and nurturing they yearned for in the absence of their mother. Fanny was the daughter of Gilbert Imlay, an American businessman whom Mary Wollstonecraft
had met in Paris during her time as a journalist covering the French Revolution. Imlay had subsequently abandoned his partner and infant daughter. William found his role as a single father to his daughter and step-daughter difficult, but he was instrumental in their education. In one of her later stories, The Elder Son, Mary wrote what was likely a description of her relationship with her father in which she stated that he "loved me almost to idolatry, and I knew this and repaid his affection with enthusiastic fondness,
notwithstanding his reserve and my awe." Godwin was a buys writer who worked from morning until lunchtime, during which time Fanny and Mary played in the nursery or went on outings with their nurse, Marguerite. In the afternoons he attended to his daughters' education. One of the girls' favourite texts was a children's book written by their mother for Fanny before she died. Both girls learned to read and write exceptionally early. Mary was reading at three years of age. Godwin did not believe in condescending to children intellectually and frequently allowed the girls to
be exposed to more adult themes in poetry, novels and stories. Accordingly, Mary and Fanny were encouraged to read their mother's famous treatises and other works as soon as they were able to. As the two girls grew older, it was evident that Godwin treated Mary and Fanny differently. Mary was his biological daughter and his star pupil. She was disciplined and possessed of an innate confidence and a sharp mental and verbal acuity. Fanny, on the other hand, Godwin described as "dull" and "indolent." Mary developed an exceptionally strong personality while Fanny,
who was far less certain of her stepfather's love, seemed content to fade into the background. The household frequently hosted some of the foremost thinkers and writers of the day in England. Free-thinking young poets, novelists and journalists who visited admired William Godwin for his most famous philosophical work, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. This was a radical text by eighteenth-century standards. In it Godwin had denounced governments as tyrannical and insisted that a truly just society was one in which individuals ruled themselves through reason
alone, not through violent state compulsion. The famed Romantic poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was one of William's visitors. He read his famous poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, to Mary and Fanny and marvelled at the attentiveness of the two young sisters, especially Mary. It was a sign of the regard which the Romantic poets and writers of England held Mary Wollstonecraft in that figures like Coleridge paid such attention to her daughters' upbringing after she died. To someone like 24-year-old Coleridge, Godwin and Wollstonecraft were giants of
the intellectual world in which he had come of age. A child with a pedigree like Mary Godwin's was bound to be exceptional, Coleridge was sure. He was not alone in this conviction. In the spring of 1801, a widow by the name of Mary-Jane Clairmont moved in next door to the Godwins. She had two children close in age to Fanny and Mary and the two families became friendly with each other. Soon a relationship developed and in the autumn William Godwin and Mary-Jane Clairmont were wed and the two households merged. William became even more
emotionally remote after he remarried. He gave his new wife full charge of Mary and Fanny, including their education and daily activities. To Mary and Fanny's disappointment, their stepmother decided that the children would no longer be allowed to sit in and listen to the fascinating conversations which ensued when Godwin's intellectual friends and admirers visited him in the evenings. Though Mary-Jane devoted herself to their daily care in every way, ensuring they were healthy, well-fed, properly washed and dressed, she lacked the warmth and sympathy that might have made Mary
and Fanny thaw towards their new stepmother. It did not help matters that Mary-Jane, once she had taken over the Godwin household, had promptly dismissed their beloved nurse Marguerite, who was one of their last links with their mother. She also removed the portrait of the girls' mother that had always hung in William's study and insisted on being called "Mama." Mary did not relent and during the remainder of her years living in the Godwin household she stubbornly refused to call her stepmother anything other than "Mrs. G" or "Mrs. Godwin."
Thus, the Clairmonts and the Godwins settled into a rather antagonistic family dynamic. In 1803, to Godwin's delight, Mary-Jane gave birth to a son whom the couple named William after his father. Though they loved their little brother, Fanny and Mary both felt that with the birth of the son he had always wanted, they now ranked even lower in their father's affections. By 1812, the tension between Mary and her stepmother had become unmanageable. Though Mary-Jane had proven to be a competent and responsible stepmother, Mary could not warm to her. She dutifully worked alongside her half-siblings in the "Juvenile Library,"
the children's book-store business which Mary-Jane had built in order to help support their constantly cash-strapped family, but Mary continued to loathe her stepmother, and Mary-Jane seemingly returned the favour. In response William sent 15-year-old Mary to stay with his friends, the Baxters, in Scotland. Mary spent a large proportion of the next two years living on the southern edge of the rugged Scottish Highlands. The Baxters welcomed Mary with great kindness and she and their daughter, Isabelle, became fast friends. The family were as politically and socially radical as Godwin and Wollstonecraft had been,
and Mary therefore felt right at home. She continued her reading and intellectual development with the full support of her new friends, who believed as wholeheartedly in the cause of women's education as Mary's parents had, and she forged a close bond of friendship with Isabelle Baxter. Additionally, Scotland was a stirring place for a free spirit like Mary and she became fascinated by the independent spirit of the country. She even took to wearing a tartan during her time there to show her support for Scottish nationalist sentiment.
After Isabelle married in 1814, Mary returned to London for good. She was about to turn 17 and her life seemed to stretch with dull predictability before her. The family's unstable finances meant that her father could not provide dowries for his daughters and Mary's only choices seemed to be remaining at home with her family, becoming a governess, or becoming an elite lady's companion. None of these options appealed to her. Her mother had been one of the first Englishwomen to make her own living as a writer and Mary yearned to follow her example. Luckily for her, she would soon find
a partner who encouraged her in her ambitions. Shortly before she arrived home from Scotland, the poet Percy Shelley paid his first visit to the Godwin family home. Percy admired William Godwin greatly and also revered the memory of Mary's mother. When Mary's father introduced Percy to her they were immediately attracted to each other, intellectually as well as physically. Though short and slight, Mary had grown into a beauty with copper-coloured hair, greenish-grey eyes, very pale skin, a high forehead, and a tiny but shapely mouth.
She was likewise struck by Shelley's handsomeness. Five years older than her, he seemed to be one of those rare youths who could continually buck convention and get away with it. His financial situation and social status, however, belied his aristocratic air and background. He had been expelled from Oxford for his open profession of atheism and his condemnation of the Church. Moreover, while he was a prolific poet, he had made very little money with his pen thus far. As if all this weren't enough to warn a young girl away from a potential suitor, Percy was also
already married with a child and another on the way, though he and his wife, Harriet Westbrook, were estranged. Mary seemed to perceive none of the dangers of becoming involved with Shelley, and she described him as "sensitive, impetuous, and generous." It only helped the situation that Percy occasionally offered Mary's father some financial support whenever he himself had some money to spare from the financing his wealthy father provided him with. By Percy's third visit, he and Mary took the first of many walks together.
Eventually Percy and Mary decided to elope together. When they did, Mary's half-sister, Jane, Mary-Jane's daughter, insisted on coming with them. Mary was less than enthused to have her stepsister accompany them, but feared Jane would expose their plan if they left her behind. For Percy's part, he seemed thrilled to be "liberating" not one, but two young women from what he perceived as the tyrannical bonds of patriarchal social respectability. Just three years previously, he had spirited Harriet away from her parents in much the same fashion. Now he, Mary and Jane fled London for France in the fall of 1814,
where the Napoleonic Wars had virtually come to an end, allowing for Englishmen and women to finally visit France again after more than twenty years of war between the two countries. They managed to make it across the Channel to Calais, where Mary and Percy celebrated what Mary later described in her journal as their "bridal night." The very next day, Mary's stepmother, Mary-Jane, caught up with them in Calais. Furious, she sought to persuade Jane to return home, which Jane refused to do. Enraged, Mary-Jane accused Mary and Shelley of corrupting her daughter and demanded that both
girls return home. She ultimately had to return to London empty-handed, but not before informing Mary that her father was furious with her for leaving. Mary was shocked. Where in years gone by her father had admired women who had the courage to pursue love and happiness between true equals, he seemingly refused to countenance the idea when it came to his own daughter. She had believed that her father would understand the choice she had made and had primarily eloped with Percy because she believed Mary-Jane would try to stop her. She had never imagined that
her father would be opposed to her actions. William Godwin's disapproval hurt Mary deeply. She later relived the trauma of this rejection in her literary works. Mary's life with Percy was exciting, but she found that it was often far less romantic than she had envisioned. They were continually short of money in France. Mary also realised just weeks into their French tour that she was pregnant. When they returned to England, the trio found that they were at the centre of a public scandal over their actions.
William Godwin refused to speak to his daughter, even turning away from her greetings when he saw her on the street. Percy's wife, Harriet, had also publicly condemned Mary for stealing away her husband and claimed that Godwin had sold his own daughters to Percy for £1,500. This was not the case, but the fact that Percy had provided Godwin with a loan for the same amount prior to the elopement made the transaction seem damning to those who had heard the rumours. Mary became depressed during her pregnancy. Percy was often absent, staying out of London
periodically to duck his many creditors. When he was home, he was inattentive to her and spent more and more time with Jane, who, following the trio's elopement, had changed her name to Claire. Mary, weary and aggravated by her half-sister's competition with her for Shelley's affections, did not miss the significance of Jane's name change. Claire was the name of the heroine in Rousseau's La Nouvelle Heloïse, who triumphs over her female rival in a love triangle. Some biographers believe that Percy and Claire had an affair during Mary's first pregnancy, but this cannot be
fully substantiated. In February 1815 Mary gave birth to a girl who arrived two months too early. Small and weak, baby Clara lived for only a few days. Mary and Percy were heartbroken, but their loss spurred Percy to renew his commitment to Mary as they mourned their lost child. As a household, Mary, Percy and Claire had established a consistent routine of work and study. All three read voraciously every day, came together frequently to discuss ideas, and attended to their own writing projects. Mary studied Latin and Greek to aid her reading and translation of Classical texts. Percy continually pursued his poetry and shared his work with Mary.
It was during these early years together that the two built a truly remarkable and cooperative literary partnership. What's more, each frequently took the other's advice during editing. Only a few months after the loss of Clara, Mary found that she was pregnant again. Though she was still deeply grieved, the promise of another child renewed her sense of hope and in January 1816 she gave birth to son whom she named William, after her father, but who soon earned the adorable nickname, "Willmouse," from his parents. In the spring of 1816, the three exiles along with
baby Willmouse departed England for Switzerland. It was against the exquisite landscape of the icy Swiss Alps and on the banks of Lake Geneva that Mary would conceive of the story and characters that were to inhabit her most famous work, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. In addition, during this time she also began writing a History of a Six-Weeks' Tour through a part of France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland, which she published in 1817. During their travels, Mary, Percy and Claire befriended Lord Byron and his friend Dr. John
Polidori, who were staying at a nearby villa, and the group spent a great deal of time together. One dull and rainy evening, after being stuck indoors for days and starved for amusement, the companions took advantage of the dreary and ominous weather to liven up their party by telling ghost stories. Though they were becoming good friends, Shelley and Byron were endlessly competitive with one another and Byron, having seen Percy run out of the room screaming in response to the images evoked by a particularly terrifying ghost story, proposed a challenge.
They should each write a Gothic story, and in so doing prove their literary talent according to the level of horror they provoked. Byron had meant to challenge Shelley above any of the others, but while both Byron and Shelley soon lost interest and moved on to other projects, Polidori and Mary took up the challenge eagerly. Dr. Polidori wrote the outline for a story which was later developed into his genre-defining novel, The Vampyre. Mary wrote the beginnings of a short story that, with Shelley's support and encouragement, eventually became Frankenstein. Their party
had been discussing recent advances in science such as "galvanism" or electricity manipulation, and gruesome folktales they had heard throughout their travels. Mary was also still haunted and tormented by her father's rejection and the death of her child. This was the wider context in which Mary Shelley started writing one of the most famous books ever written. In September, just one month after Mary's nineteenth birthday, she, Percy and Claire returned to England. They settled in Bath since, with the summer season over, it was cheap to find lodgings there. Claire moved quietly into private lodgings.
She had embarked on an affair with Lord Byron during her sojourn in Switzerland and now, pregnant, went into seclusion before she gave birth to her baby, a daughter named Allegra. Mary had scarcely settled in before she began receiving letters from her sister Fanny in London. Despite his refusal to write to his daughter, William Godwin still hoped that Percy would continue to support him financially and had enlisted Fanny to write to Mary on the subject. This drove a wedge between the sisters and as a result, Mary missed the note of lonely desperation in Fanny's last
letter to her. Having had her request to come and live in Bath with her sisters ignored, Fanny sadly took her own life in October 1816, worn out by the difficult environment within the Godwin household. This family tragedy was followed only weeks later by another. Percy's wife, Harriet, took her own life too, leaving behind their two children, a daughter named Ianthe and a son named Charles. These terrible events darkened Mary's perspective of the world. She felt a deep guilt that she had not extended her hand to her sister when Fanny needed it, or understood her plight. She also
suffered guilt for so thoughtlessly stepping into Harriet's place after Shelley abandoned her. At the time, Mary had admired Percy for freeing himself from a woman he did not love. He had married Harriet at her insistence after she had become pregnant, and he continued to support his children financially. Two people who no longer loved each other had every right to seek happiness elsewhere, Mary had believed. But after Harriet's tragic death, she wondered if the trials she had faced since leaving home - her father's rejection, Shelley's unfaithfulness, and the
death of her baby - were part of a broader karmic retribution for her sins against her fellow women. Despite any personal feelings or resentments Mary might have held about any individual woman, she now resolved to act differently toward all women in future, and to quietly assist them whenever she could. Her developing perspective also dramatically influenced her final editorial process on Frankenstein, which she published anonymously in 1818. While many modern readers of science fiction or lovers of monster movies might read Frankenstein as a classic Gothic horror
with science fiction elements, one that critiqued the rise of industrialisation, it was also intrinsically connected to her own emotional turmoil as she was writing and editing it. Modern literary scholars continue to marvel at the many layers of Frankenstein's monster, which many believe also stands as a symbol of how eighteenth-century society viewed poor and enslaved people, whose supposedly "monstrous" bodies somehow alienated all compassion instead of inspiring sympathy from fellow humans. Perhaps it was also a commentary on those around her who had
suffered so much between her flight from home in 1814 and the publication of Frankenstein. At the end of December 1816, in a move that was almost certainly a strategy to gain custody of his children after Harriet's death, Percy and Mary married in a quick, simple ceremony. While the move helped reconcile the couple with William Godwin, Percy ultimately failed to win custody of his children. Instead, the presiding judge awarded custody of Ianthe and Charles to Harriet's parents instead. In September 1817, Mary gave birth to a daughter. She named the baby Clara
in memory of her first child, or perhaps in honour of her stepsister, a sign that the two women might have begun to put their enmity and competition over Shelley behind them. Claire had just recently suffered Byron's rejection of herself and their baby, a predicament with which Mary sympathised. Further, by sending Claire away, Percy had made it clear that though he might occasionally stray, he intended to remain faithful to Mary. Meanwhile, the Shelley's finances finally began to recover, even though neither Percy nor Mary had made much money from the recent publication of their works,
despite these including Frankenstein and Percy's Ozymandias, a famous poem about Pharaoh Ramesses II of ancient Egypt. However, during their absence in Switzerland, Percy's grandfather had died and had left him an annual income of £1,000. This was enough for them to maintain themselves outside of expensive London. With it Percy, Mary and Claire departed from England again in March of 1818, this time for Italy. The Shelley party travelled first to Venice, where they deposited baby Allegra in Byron's household. Percy, Claire and Mary, together with Willmouse and Clara,
then travelled on to Livorno in Tuscany. Mary and Percy enjoyed a long, blissful summer together in the Italian sunshine, taking walks through the countryside, playing with the children and collaborating together on a translation of Plato's Symposium. Unfortunately, in the Autumn, tragedy struck the Shelleys once again. Baby Clara suddenly developed a fever. The next day, Claire and Percy were abruptly called away to Venice to retrieve Allegra from Lord Byron's care after receiving a vague but seemingly desperate message from the child's nurse. They then wrote to Mary, asking her to join them in Venice as well, believing
that because of Byron's admiration for Mary, only she could convince him to hand the child over. Mary was torn. She was angry at Percy and Claire for summoning her when they knew she had a sick child to care for who should not travel, but she also felt guilty for her reluctance to go. In the end, she packed up both children and departed for Venice. Sadly, the trip proved to be too much for poor Clara, and she died of her mysterious illness in September, just three weeks after her first birthday. Worse still, the fears that Allegra's nurse had poured out in her letter
had proved to be groundless. Mary spent the winter in shock. For reasons that are not entirely clear, she refused to speak to Percy. Perhaps she blamed him for forcing her to travel with a sick child. For his part, Percy was deeply hurt by his wife's withdrawal and fell into a depression of his own. He sought distraction once again with his friends and with other female companions. Mary, who also now refused to share her bed with Percy, seemed not to notice. In theory, she agreed with the principle of "free love," but seems to have never taken a lover herself even
though Percy had assured her that he would not interfere should she choose to. Mary had always responded to advances from other men with reserved and polite refusals, protesting that she loved only Shelley. Now, she didn't seem to care that he was seeking comfort with other women. The spring of 1819 may have brought some reconciliation between the young couple, for Mary became pregnant once again in March. However, the painful distance between Mary and Percy was horribly compounded that summer when four-year-old William died of malaria when they were in Rome.
The loss of both her children in less than a year shattered Mary. She now confronted her latest pregnancy with a sense of doom, wondering when this child would be taken from her as well. She found solace only in work and began writing a new novella, Mathilda. An exploration of the patriarchal world that her mother had criticised decades earlier, the novel tells the story of a father who takes his own life to escape his incestuous love for his daughter, for which Mathilda, the title character, lives the rest of her life in guilt and misery, for inspiring such "unnatural love," though she did nothing to provoke it.
She sent the manuscript to her father, asking him to help her find a publisher. William Godwin wrote back horrified and adamantly refused her request. The subject matter was "disgusting," he protested. As taboo as it still seems today, incest was actually a semi-common theme in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Gothic literature, but, noted Godwin, the novel would almost certainly be banned if the public suspected that a woman had written it. Indeed, Mathilda would not see publication until 1959, over a century after Mary's death.
In 1819, Mary gave birth to her fourth child, a boy they named Percy Florence after his father and the city in which he was born. Little Percy seemed a healthy and robust baby. Mary's broken heart began to mend, and her hopes cautiously returned. Because Godwin continued to insist on being supported by his daughter and son-in-law, and because Percy refused to send him any more money, Mary got back to work on another manuscript that might bring her father some income. By 1821, she had produced Valperga, a historical novel which reads like a direct challenge to Niccolo Machiavelli's absolutist political philosophy
as found in works like The Prince, and his biography of the fourteenth-century Duke of Lucca, Castruccio Castracani. Castruccio is the villain of Valperga rather than the hero who, in his ambition, destroys his country, his people and everyone he loves. His female counterpart, Euthanasia, or "noble death," takes her own life when she fails to prevent Castruccio's violent conduct. Godwin spent some months editing the manuscript after receiving it from Mary and it was accepted and published by a London press in 1823. The summer of 1822 changed Mary's life forever. She and Percy were staying in a seaside villa near
San Terrenzo. With many friends and hangers-on in evidence, the tension and distance which persisted between Percy and Mary appeared less sharp, but was nonetheless real. Their beloved son Percy Florence continued to grow strong and healthy, but Mary suffered a final miscarriage in June, a traumatic loss that plunged her into depression once again. Percy fled the villa with his friends to try out his new sailboat, designed by his friend Edward Trelawney, a former naval officer. Percy had been anxious to acquire a fast enough boat to compete with that of Lord Byron,
and he instructed Trelawney to add sails and masts such as could not be supported by the sailboat's too-small hull. While returning from a visit to Byron on the 8th of July 1822, Percy's boat was lost in a storm over the bay. His body, as well as the bodies of his two companions washed up on shore within a week. Mary descended into such a depth of despair over Percy's death at 29 years of age, as well as guilt over the state of their relationship at the time of his passing, that she found herself unable to attend his funeral, or indeed, to make any relevant arrangements.
As Mary remained in shock, Edward Trelawney arranged for Percy to be buried in Rome, a funeral which he thought romantic and fitting for Shelley with a funeral pyre on the shores of the bay where he had drowned. Both Mary and Byron found Trelawney's choice rather grotesque and Mary herself found it impossible to attend. Trelawney was seemingly offended and resentful of Mary, misinterpreting her shock over Percy's death as a cold indifference. When friends of the Shelleys, Leigh and Marianne Hunt, arrived to comfort Mary in her mourning, Trelawney gossiped with them
about Percy's supposedly cold-hearted wife who had made him miserable with her depression. During Percy's cremation, Trelawney later wrote, the body had fallen open and the poet's heart was revealed. Trelawney had snatched the blackened heart from Percy's collapsing frame. He then gave the heart to Leigh Hunt. After a year of watching Mary struggle with her grief after Shelley's death, Hunt eventually became convinced of Trelawney's jealousy and returned Percy's heart to Mary. Edward Trelawney had known Percy for less than six months when he died, and yet he began to
present himself as having been Shelley's "truest friend." He even purchased and dug a grave for himself next to Shelley in the Protestant cemetery in Rome. Trelawney's actions and his bewildering condemnation of Mary might indicate his own guilt; eager to impress his famous poet friend, he had almost certainly exaggerated his abilities and his incompetent construction of Shelley's boat largely caused the poet's death. Nonetheless, Trelawney would continue his campaign to wrest Percy's memory and legacy from the hands of his wife for years to come. In this time of need, Lord Byron surprisingly became Mary's emotional anchor.
Anxious to distract her from her bereavement and knowing that she was now virtually penniless, Byron asked if she might serve as his editor and make copies for his most recent collection of poems for a generous commission. Mary was touched and she humbly and gratefully agreed. Byron also worked to help reconcile her with Shelley's hostile father, Sir Timothy, in a bid to obtain a promise of financial support for Mary and her son. Sir Timothy agreed on the basis that he would take Percy Florence into his custody and pay for his education.
Mary declined, adamantly refusing to part with her only remaining child. Sir Timothy finally agreed to provide a paltry £200 per year to support Mary and her son, but stated that if Mary ever wrote about Percy or attempted to publish any more of his works, she would be cut off without a penny. It was in this precarious financial state that Mary returned to England in 1823, a 26-year-old widow with next to nothing. Though her relationship with her father improved following her return, she understood that she was largely on her own. She had been publicly vilified
for her and Percy's lifestyle and it was difficult for her to get writing commissions or sell books. Further, Mary's father and stepmother still expected financial support from her. Determined to make a living as a writer and support her son and family, Mary got to work writing articles and stories for magazines and ladies' journals. In 1826, Mary published The Last Man, another novel that, like Frankenstein, has come to be seen as a genre-defining novel of modern science fiction. The book touched on many of the same themes that her previous work had, but it also reflected her sense of utter
isolation following Percy's death. Mary's grief extended too to Lord Byron, who had died in 1824. An eerily prescient story to the modern ear, The Last Man takes place in the twenty-first century when a global pandemic has killed the entire world's population save for one man. Accompanied by a stray dog, his only companion, the main character wanders with dreadful aimlessness through an empty and haunted world. This book did not sell well and many critics lambasted it as much as they had Frankenstein when they discovered it was written by a woman. Early nineteenth-century women's novels were supposed to be soft and romantic.
What kind of degenerate woman, Mary's critics questioned incredulously, could conceive of such obscene horrors? In the 1830s, Mary decided to disregard her father-in-law's demand and began editing a posthumous collection of Percy's poems. Sir Timothy heard about the project and threatened Mary with disinheritance if she included any biographical details about Percy. Mary compromised by inserting anecdotes about Percy into her footnotes, telling little stories about the conditions under which he had written each poem. In the process she muted many of his
most controversial beliefs and actions including his atheism and other revolutionary ideas. Quarrels with her father-in-law were not Mary's only difficulties during these years. As a full-time writer and widowed single mother, it was also difficult for her to pursue much of a personal life. In any event, her remaining son, Percy Florence, always came first for her. She moved to Harrow in 1828 to enrol him in school as a day-pupil, since she could not afford for him to board. During her residence in the village, she is understood to have had
a romantic relationship with Jane Williams, who had been a companion of Edward Williams, one of the two men who had drowned alongside Percy in 1822. She received several offers of marriage during these years, but she refused almost all of them on the grounds that none could replace Percy in her eyes, despite how fraught their relationship had often been. As an early feminist and believer in social reform, Mary spent the 1830s promoting the cause of women in English society and politics. Her novels during this period including Lodore,
published in 1835, and Falkner, published in 1837. Lodore advocated for the ideas that men and women should have equal access to education. In Falkner the feminine values of peace, love and family save the male characters from their own destructive pursuits. Mary also displayed her feminist politics in her efforts to help various struggling women friends. In 1827, for example, she gave financial help to her friend Isabel Robinson, who was facing disgrace for being pregnant and unwed. Her writing flourished too. By the mid-1830s, Mary finally seemed to be earning the accolades she deserved. Several literary groups recognised her publicly
as one of England's finest writers. Her last three novels, The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck, Lodore and Falkner sold much better and were far more positively reviewed than her previous works. The re-release of Frankenstein in 1831 and its inclusion in Bentley's Standard Novel Series made her a household name and until her health began to interfere with her writing, Mary had more than enough work and commissions to occupy her. She continued to publish stories and articles for magazines and ladies journals and was invited to contribute numerous biographies of famous French,
Italian, Spanish and Portuguese literary figures for the Cabinet Cyclopaedia - the first literary collection of its kind. This project took Mary four years to complete. She proposed to the publisher that they might include biographies of literary and historical women as well. When her proposal was rejected, she set to work revising many of her biographies, making sure that she layered in details about the women inhabiting the lives of each male biographical subject. When Percy Florence turned eighteen, Mary took him to Europe for the next three years.
She and Percy Florence travelled first to Paris, and then Metz, sightseeing and socialising with other English travellers before moving on to explore Germany. Partly as a tribute to her mother Mary Wollstonecraft, whose final book before her own death had been a travelogue of northern Europe, Mary Shelley published Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842 and 1843. During their travels in Europe, Mary began to suffer from periodic headaches, the first signs of an illness that would ultimately take the celebrated author's life.
By then her financial situation had become more secure. In 1844, Sir Timothy Shelley died, leaving Percy Florence as the heir to the Shelley estate including Field Place, a country manor in Sussex. There was far less money to be inherited than they had expected, but both Percy Florence and Mary were nonetheless relieved that their financial troubles seemed to be over. However, before long Mary was suffering from prolonged periods of physical debilitation. As well as headaches, she now suffered from occasional paralysis of her limbs, which prevented her from writing.
A doctor eventually correctly diagnosed her with a brain tumour. The condition was completely untreatable in the middle of the nineteenth century and it claimed Mary's life on the 1st of February 1851 at the age of fifty-three. Mary had requested that she be buried next to her parents. Unfortunately, the St. Pancras churchyard where they had been laid to rest was now in the path of a proposed railway and no further burials could take place there. Instead, Percy Florence buried Mary together with his grandparents at St. Peters Church in Bournemouth.
When Mary's writing desk was cleared out a year after her death, a copy of Percy Shelley's poem Adonais, a vial containing some of the poet's ashes, and in a small silk bag, the remains of his heart were found. All three items were placed in Mary's grave. After her death, Mary Shelley's legacy was excessively simplified in ways that persist down to the present day. Literary critics who wrote about Mary after her death tended to focus exclusively on Frankenstein, ignoring her much larger body of work and causing much of it to slide into obscurity for more than a century. Many critics went further still, implying that
Percy had contributed substantially to writing Frankenstein. These sorts of suspicions were never levelled at Percy's poetry even though Mary acted as his editor and literary collaborator. Memorials to her from family and colleagues tended to focus on her role as wife and mother, and more than a century would pass before she was finally given her due as one of the greatest writers of her day. Some of her radical and reformist contemporaries disliked her approach to seeking change by gently embedding calls for it into her writing. Her father, mother and husband had been infinitely
braver, they asserted, speaking out openly against injustice no matter the cost to their reputations. But Mary's approach was based on her belief that frank and strident political commentary rarely achieved the desired results. Perhaps her more muted politics were shaped as well by her life experiences. Shelley did not have an easy life, losing her husband and nearly all of her children, as well as having a difficult family background that included the death of her mother as a result of a post-partum infection giving birth to her, a difficult father and stepmother,
and her half-sister Fanny taking her own life. In the end, Mary will always be known for Frankenstein, but perhaps she deserves to be remembered not only for this singular novel, but also for her overall contribution to the science fiction and Gothic horror genres. What do you think of Mary Shelley? Did she fail to live up to the radical ideals promoted by her mother and father, or was her strategy of quietly promoting her ideas through her writing the best way for a woman in the early nineteenth century to promote her own vision of the world?
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